AFRL’s Concept Impact Team demonstrates technology payoff to the warfighter.

Weapon systems analysts traditionally conduct military worth analysis (MWA) to evaluate the warfighter payoff resulting either from the development and implementation of new assets or from the establishment of new concepts of employment for existing assets. Analysis scope ranges from the campaign level to the mission level and thus differs in magnitude, time frame, and level of detail (see Figure 1). While MWA can potentially evaluate hundreds of possible metrics, it typically includes parameters such as time to accomplish objectives, number of targets neutralized, amount of collateral damage, and volume of resources consumed (including dollars). As depicted in Figure 2, laboratory directors must consider both the analytically demonstrated payoff and the clear interest of the user community in making an informed investment decision; therefore, determining the MWA for a particular laboratory technology is vitally important.

In the guided weapons arena, analysts must weigh factors such as weapon performance and the number and type of weapons and aircraft (force structure) to employ in a conflict. If a new concept weapon is similar to an existing weapon in its performance and use, analysts can easily employ existing MWA tools and approaches to establish the concept weapon’s warfighter payoff. However, most new concept weapons are radically different from existing weapons. Whereas simple, unitary guided weapons have flight times of seconds or minutes, new concepts call for constellations of cooperative weapons with flight times encompassing many hours or even days. Other emergent concepts envision microbots that commanders can deploy and use as automated special operations teams. Evaluating the military worth of these and other new concept weapons is becoming increasingly difficult because existing analytical tools and techniques were not built to address these complex applications.